The future of multilingual crisis communication

This chapter concludes by reflecting on the lessons learned about multilingual crisis communication during the Covid-19 pandemic. Initially, there was hope that the crisis could catalyse positive change, as highlighted by Arundhati Roy’s essay “The pandemic is a portal.” Early contributions to the Language-on-the-Move Covid-19 Archives and the Multilingua special issue mirrored this optimism. While the anticipated transformation did not materialize widely, this book, Multilingual Crisis Communication: Insights from China, holds onto that moment of hope. The chapter summarizes the impact of language barriers on linguistic minorities during the pandemic, noting how inequalities were exacerbated. While China’s systematic emergency language services model provided valuable insights, global multilingual public health communications were often inadequate. This book calls for rethinking language barriers as dynamic and context-dependent, advocating for engaged, participatory research. It highlights the importance of ethnographic studies to inform more inclusive and effective public health communication strategies in the future.